Snehk's WIP Megathread

This thread will be dedicated to asking questions, sharing ideas and suggestions, and uploading assets and WIP screenshots of my fan missions.

All assets posted herein by me will be available for use in any fan mission project, as well as projects not related with The Dark Mod, with only restriction being leaving a proper reference to their author (me) in project's readme.

Do you plan on getting a modeled ship hull detailed out after blocking in all the bulkheads and rooms? There's a pretty quick and efficient way of going about sealing and portaling various sections if you don't mind shear invisible clips off the sides of the vessel. The clips would only be noticeable if you needed the player to swim close to the waterline.

Yeah modeling the exterior will definitely be your best bet. Trying to do the outer hull with brushes/patches sounds like it would be a total nightmare. It's also a prime candidate for some vertex blends for darkening/wear as well as the waterline for the material. I could help you setup the UVs/Blend material for that if you wanted, as it would certainly help give it some visual oomph for texture detail.

I think that I've finished designing the main layout of the warehouse. I'm yet to add more finishing touches to it. Texturing is still highly WIP, but I'd already chosen textures for all the rooms inside.

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That's how it looks from the outside. I'm going to add some windows to lighten the area inside.

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The entry has got some support beams holding the roof.

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There are some wooden beams outside as well, so get your rope arrows ready!

Thats a good start. The proportions seem right and reasonable. Artistically however there's room to grow. Do google searches to see how roof tiles are built if you want to keep it visible from the inside (you are missing a lot of elements). Avoid long, mathematically perfect brushes. Break the geometry in sections, so the object wont be overly simple, and the tiling not so jarring. Search for how historical buildings are actually constructed. An example would be how a big opening like that entrance door has to be done in a masonry construction. Dont try to wing it, copy the examples, mix the references to create your unique building. Dont let the character walk around the whole of your structure, dont let him see the entirety of the inside space at a once. Create limited spaces the player need to find the exit from. Study Melan's, Springheel's or Bikerdude's architecture to see how it is done.

I wanted to get the proportions and general idea what would go where (see it from within the editor) first, then take care of the visuals. The tiles visible from inside are an effect of texturing not finished yet and I'm not sure if they'd stay there in the end. The building is already split into several sections and player would have to find his way around to reach everything. I'm going to search for reference materials and I'll definitely check prefabs and modules.

Oh, that makes sense then. In TDM you don't have to hold back on triangles that much. One of my hero meshes is 12K tris and it works fine. Shadows and multiple materials are more problematic, especially if you want to have good lighting.

I know in Sven Coop they have some pretty densely packed (polygon wise) 1st person guns. I was trying to look up what GoldSrc can actually handle but on modern hardware people tend to use more in place of little to no advanced shaders.